This review contains spoilers
Out of all of the new 3D platformer mascot trilogies on the PS2, Sly Cooper was the underrated one. It could’ve been because Sucker Punch was a new Sony developer with only one game on the N64 under their belts. It could be because Insomniac and Naughty Dog had better fission with each other and kept Sucker Punch out of their friendly, competitive brew-ha-ha. It could be because both companies had more air time with commercials than Sucker Punch (which isn’t true. I knew about Sly Cooper from watching commercials on Cartoon Network at the time, while I heard about the other two series from word of mouth). Sly Cooper didn’t seem like it was in the running against Ratchet and Jak as the supreme 3D platformer mascot at the time, but now we see it as a third of a holy trinity of PS2 series. I grew up loving all three of these PS2 trilogies and saw them as a collective, and that wasn’t just because I played all of them around the same time on the same system. The Sly Cooper trilogy, while not getting as much limelight as the other two series, had as much charm, character, creativity, and stellar presentation as the other two. This level of quality was what tied all three of these series together. I’m glad other people who played these games group, Sly Cooper, in with the other two series in retrospect as I always did. In saying this, one detriment to the Sly Cooper series compared to the other two is that it had the weakest first entry out of the three series. The first Sly Cooper game is not a rough prototype for the rest of the series to have built upon like the first Ratchet & Clank, nor is it a unique entry with its own strengths like the first Jak and Daxter. The first Sly Cooper game is different from the other two in the trilogy. Still, it’s not a case of the developers having to radically change their IP due to the first entry being too exemplary to recreate like the first Jak and Daxter. The first Sly game is a favorite to quite a few people, but I’ve always thought it slightly underwhelming.
A silhouetted figure is running across the rooftops of a city with a French flag and the Eiffel Tower to signify that it’s Paris. The figure shows himself to be Sly Cooper, an anthropomorphic raccoon with blue clothes, a red backpack, and a cane with a golden arch. Once you press start, the game catapults you into the action as Sly radios in his nerdy turtle friend Bently about their operation to steal a book kept in a police vault. The operation goes smoothly until Sly is ambushed by Inspector Carmelita Fox (she’s a fox and a fox. Get it?), who tries to take Sly into custody by force with her shock pistol. Sly makes a quick getaway in his team’s van and gives us some context to who he is and what he just stole. Sly is a master thief from a long line of master thieves specializing in stealing from criminals. The book he stole back is the Thievius Raccoonus, a relic from his family composed of thieving information each member puts in themselves. When Sly was a kid, a group called the Fiendish Five killed his parents and ransacked his house for the book, ripping vital sections for themselves. Sly and his two friends, Bently and Murray, must venture around the world collecting the missing pages of the Thievius Raccoonus and bring the ones responsible for his parent’s death to justice.
The second generation of 3D platformers sure wore their influences on their sleeves. As Jak and Daxter were influenced by Banjo Kazooie, Sly Cooper takes obvious elements from franchises like Metal Gear Solid and Crash Bandicoot. Sly Cooper is a franchise that mixes elements of stealth in the rooted base of a 3D platformer. In Sly Cooper, everything in the environment can be readily used to traverse or as a means of stealth. Sly’s nimbleness allows him to climb up pipes, perch himself onto spires, latch onto hook-like objects with his cane, etc. When he needs to be stealthy, he can sidle against walls, quickly cover himself behind barriers, and even make himself invisible. You can probably imagine Sly controls extremely well, considering all of these different moves he can pull off. If he didn’t control it smoothly, the game would be unplayable. Fortunately, Sly’s versatile move set is backed by buttery smooth controls with an excellent framerate to boost. This is certainly a must for any platformer, but how does it lend to the stealth aspects? Sly will often find himself encountering guards with flashlights that are meant to be snuck around because they have ranged attacks that will home in if he gets caught. There are also yellow security beams scattered everywhere, and if Sly comes into contact with one of them, he’ll trigger an alarm. The beams turn red, and Sly will be incinerated if he contacts them again. Smooth controls for being stealthy are entirely necessary because of these obstacles. Combining stealth elements in a 3D platformer was probably uncommon then, so I’m glad the developers managed to execute both firmly with the controls.
One of the more outstanding aspects of Sly Cooper is its presentation. Sly Cooper is ultimately a franchise with a younger demographic in mind, but that doesn’t mean it has to be sickeningly cute. Sly is stylized as a cartoon with its cel-shaded animation and comic book-like presentation. The tone is rooted in film noir, a choice in the presentation to accentuate Sly’s role as a thief. The introductions of each chapter in this game highlight these presentation aspects wonderfully. Sly narrates the background of each Fiendish Five member like the narration in a noir film, presented with animated comic stills. The intro concludes with a title card with the chapter's name, similar to a noir film, and it could also be like introducing an episode of a cartoon. As far as the Metal Gear Solid influence, the influence isn’t entirely obvious, but it was the pinnacle of the stealth genre at the time. That, and the codex calls between Sly and Bently, talking heads jabbering about secret operations, are very reminiscent of the calls between Otacon and Snake.
The direction in Sly Cooper is more obviously inspired by Crash Bandicoot. Every level is a linear path to get an item, in this case, a key. There are approximately seven levels per hub world, but the hubs are far more intricately designed than the hubs in Crash Bandicoot. Once you get each key per level, Sly can access the area with the boss. Sly also dies in one hit like Crash but can take more damage if he collects a horseshoe that he wears on his red backpack. Sly can also upgrade to a golden horseshoe that allows him to take two hits instead of just one. Horseshoes are readily available in the levels but can also be acquired by collecting 100 coins. This health system is copied and pasted from acquiring 100 wumpa fruit to get Aku Aku as a protector in Crash Bandicoot. Also, the linear platforming levels naturally lend themselves to Crash Bandicoot comparisons. However, I do not think Sly Cooper executes this type of direction as well as in the Crash series. Linear 3D platformers were never my forte, and I’ve always preferred open-world-Esque 3D platformers. The areas of the latter type of games feel much more fleshed out and give substantial weight to the world. I didn’t mind it in the Crash series because everything about that series was simple; thus, the simple, linear level design was warranted. Sly presents us with so much interesting background about the character and his Robin Hood-like persona that it’s a shame the design of the game doesn’t match the same level of intricacy that the presentation does.
The linear level design of Sly Cooper also doesn’t work because the game is too easy. There are some levels in the Crash series that require several accurate maneuvers in jumping, defeating enemies, and getting past obstacles that will take a little while to get past and potentially have you farm lives for insurance. In Sly Cooper’s case, the environment and enemies are designed to be accessible for Sly, plus the more refined controls also help quite a bit. Sly might need one horseshoe to get through a level, but having the golden horseshoe almost guarantees that Sly will easily get through it. Areas that are more focused on stealth can sometimes be tense because Sly can only get hit once, but the game is still lenient with error. The strength of the levels is intertwined with the acrobatics Sly can pull off rather than presenting a substantial challenge. It’s still fun, but I felt much more entranced by the difficulty of Crash Bandicoot than I was by testing out the capabilities of Sly’s moveset.
The levels are still enjoyable because of the variety each hub world presents. Besides effectively catering to Sly’s range of movement, each main level takes place in a different area of the world. I can probably attribute my interest in geography as a kid to playing Sly Cooper because each area is different and geographically dispersed. Besides the obvious location of Paris at the tutorial level, each area is somewhat based on real-world locations. The Welsh coastline is a rainy, craggy graveyard of pirate ships. Mesa City is a discount Las Vegas centered in a dry canyon region of Utah. Haiti (no specific region) capitalizes on the country’s voodoo lore for a spooky level filled with ghosts and witch doctors. China is snowy and mountainous, and everything about this area, from the enemies to the architecture, screams orientalism. Using the unique geography of each of these places is how the developers get away with using the platformer trope of providing different themed areas to keep the game fresh.
Mesa City is a desert area, China is a snow level, and Haiti is a quasi-Halloweeny area. All of these are staples in the platformer genre, but the real-world elements give these areas a substantial identity not only between the levels in the game but in the Sly Cooper franchise. Mesa City has Sly jumping on roulette tables and climbing neon fixtures on rooftops. Haiti has Sly sliding across vines from mammoth-sized swamp monsters, all the while batting at ghosts made of purple ectoplasm. Crash Bandicoot may have offered more of a challenge, but Sly accomplishes something in its level variety. These levels are also encouraged to be searched thoroughly and played more than once because of the bottle clues, the game’s only collectible. Across most levels, around 20-40 bottles will be scattered about that amount to unlocking a code to a vault with a page of the Thievius Raccoonus in it. Many of these pages unlock special moves varying in usefulness, but this collectible gives the player an incentive to explore these levels, and they make sense in the grand scheme of the story as well.
The developers of this game should’ve better centered their focus on achieving variety through different level foregrounds instead of going overboard with it via gimmicky levels. Besides platforming levels, the developers implemented other types of levels in the vein of vehicle levels and mini-games. Some levels have Sly piloting a floating orange cruiser equipped with blaster turrets. The biggest problem with these levels is that there are so many obstacles in Sly’s way, so most of the levels will be tediously blasting away at the hard-wearing obstacles. The mini-game levels involve preventing crabs from stealing treasure, whacking chickens (this level is also a total upset of tone from the Haiti level), and lighting torches with the body grease of piranhas. These mini-games are quick and easy but ultimately pointless. Sometimes, Carmelita will show up and try to subdue you with her shock pistol again. These levels are designed exactly like any normal platforming level, only with pistol blasts in the background. Fortunately for Sly, Carmelita has the aim of a drunk Stormtrooper, so she never poses much of a threat. The absolute worst gimmick levels are the ones with Murray. He’s not utilized as much in this game besides being Sly’s friend and the driver, so I guess the developers implemented him in these levels so you wouldn’t forget about him. Considering what they did, I’d rather be ambivalent towards Murray than be frustrated with him. One gimmick level has Sly protecting Murray as he escorts him through a road with guards coming around corners to whack him. Murray is utterly defenseless, so Sly has a turret gun at the helm to protect him. The difficulty comes from how feeble Murray is matched with shooting Murray on accident. The even worse gimmick levels are the two races. The team van controls like dogshit, and winning is a matter of being fortunate that the CPUs don’t steal the boosts. Platforming as Sly is a strong aspect of this game, and it never gets tiring, so why did the developers overdo it with these gimmicky levels? They should’ve been confident enough with the platforming levels, but the gimmick levels here make it apparent that the developers weren’t confident enough that the platforming levels were enough. The platforming levels are by far the strength of Sly Cooper, and these gimmick levels never prove themselves as welcome additions to the game.
The simplicity of this game also doesn’t bode well with its characters. Sly is naturally the main protagonist being the titular character and all, but all of the other main players are so underutilized that it begs the question as to why they are even there. Bently is the brains of Sly’s gang and the technological master. He’s a man of extraordinary intellect, but we never really get to relish in Bently’s genius. He’s essentially a glorified tutorial as he nasally gives Sly directions to new obstacles the game throws at you (I must get this point out of the way now that it’s mentioned. Throughout every game in the series, Bently will tell you how to execute a move by literally telling Sly the button combination the player has to do. What to do isn’t presented as a text blurb briefly on screen. It’s a voiced line by the characters to “press the circle button” and what not to do a certain move. I didn’t think much of this as a kid, but it irks me as an adult. I can’t tell if this is endearing because of how silly it is or if it pulls me out of the immersion. Is this a fourth-wall-breaking element taken from the Metal Gear Solid series or something? All of these moves are told through codex calls, after all). Sometimes Bently’s cautious nature clashes with Sly’s daring attitude, which is entertaining, but it happens so often that Bently starts to get annoying. I’ve already explained in detail why Murray feels underutilized. Sly even refers to him as a part-time burden in the beginning cutscene, and I’m not sure why the developers decided to make him the player’s part-time burden as well. Carmelita has steamy romantic chemistry with Sly but doesn’t pose much of a threat. Her voice actor also did a terrible job giving her character the passion she’s supposed to have. The voice acting also is a problem for Sly for the same reason. Sly is supposed to be cool and confident, but his voice actor puts it on a little too thick, and he sounds emotionless. He approaches each Fiendish Five member so nonchalantly that it’s almost like they didn’t kill his parents or anything.
The members of the Fiendish Five are a colorful crew of baddies that are also each level’s final boss. Each offers unique fights and serves a unique purpose in the gang. Raleigh is a bourgeois frog turned pirate who is the tech worker of the Fiendish Five. Muggshot is the dim-witted, gangster-inspired muscle of the gang. Mz. Ruby is a mystical supernatural worker, and the Panda King is the disenfranchised demolitions expert. They are all also a bit underwhelming in certain aspects. They are presented like the bosses in Crash Bandicoot, animal bosses with their own gimmicks one has to exploit to defeat them. The bosses in Crash Bandicoot are fine because the game is so simple. Still, Sly Cooper introduces us to these bosses with so much exposition with their own levels surrounding their personas that their encounters feel so anticlimactic. All of these fights are also incredibly easy, with Mz. Ruby’s fight is an unexceptional exception due to the broken rhythm-game gimmick.
Then there’s the fifth member of the Fiendish Five: Clockwerk, a giant menacing, mechanical owl fueled by his hatred for the Cooper Gang. Unlike the other members of the Fiendish Five, ripping up the Thievius Raccoonus was directly motivated by relinquishing the Cooper legacy, or so he thought. The final act up to Clockwerk is all climax as Sly, and the gang utilizes their talents to their fullest. Murray drives up to the volcano's peak in the van with Sly, clearing explosive ordinances and debris off the path. He then clears away monstrous, volcanic blobs to get Sly inside of the heart of Clockwerk’s lair. Bently then has to save Sly after he falls into one of Clockwerk’s traps by hacking the mainframe. It’s nice that Bently finally gets to shine, but it feels uneven implementing something new in the game's climax. The player then plays as Carmelita of all characters and helps Sly climb further up the volcano to face Clockwerk. Clockwerk is not an anti-climactic fight like the others. He makes his gigantic presence known with more exposition, detailing his hatred for Sly and his family. His fight is in three acts without checkpoints, so you know this final fight means business. The first two acts involve shooting at him with Carmelita’s weaponized jetpack, in which Carmelita exposes weaknesses in Clockwerk’s armor with shock pistol blasts. The real struggle here is maneuvering the jetpack with inverted PS2 controls. As Clockwerk plunges into the lava, Sly has to get past tons of laser security to make it to Clockwerk’s head to deal the final blows. Once the fight is done, the remnants of Clockwerk simmer in the lava, and Carmelita foolishly gives Sly a five-second head start before she tries to arrest him. He uses that opportunity to cuff her to the molten rock and make a getaway with his friends. That’s a real dick move, Sly. The malevolent menace Clockwerk is dead, and all's right with the world...or is it? (there is a cutscene after the credits with Clockwerk’s eyeball flashing, indicating that he’s not dead. You’d have to see this for the full impact of what I’m alluding to).
The Sly Cooper trilogy on the PS2 was one of my favorite series growing up and was an exemplary new 3D platformer IP worthy of being grouped with Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter. As for the first game of the series, the aspects that underwhelmed me as a kid still persist into adulthood. The first entry of this series feels like an incredible premise undermined by its simplistic, Crash Bandicoot-inspired direction. Don’t get me wrong, I like Crash Bandicoot just fine. The simple elements of that series serve it quite well. However, I feel like the Sly Cooper series had more depth and intrigue with its characters and its story. What is presented here is a 3D platformer that plays well with some great, varied levels mixed in with some dumb gimmicks. It feels more rooted in the more rudimentary 3D platformers of the previous generation than progressing with the other second-generation platformers. The full potential of the series wouldn’t come into full form just yet, so the first game always feels like it’s a league below the sequels.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
A silhouetted figure is running across the rooftops of a city with a French flag and the Eiffel Tower to signify that it’s Paris. The figure shows himself to be Sly Cooper, an anthropomorphic raccoon with blue clothes, a red backpack, and a cane with a golden arch. Once you press start, the game catapults you into the action as Sly radios in his nerdy turtle friend Bently about their operation to steal a book kept in a police vault. The operation goes smoothly until Sly is ambushed by Inspector Carmelita Fox (she’s a fox and a fox. Get it?), who tries to take Sly into custody by force with her shock pistol. Sly makes a quick getaway in his team’s van and gives us some context to who he is and what he just stole. Sly is a master thief from a long line of master thieves specializing in stealing from criminals. The book he stole back is the Thievius Raccoonus, a relic from his family composed of thieving information each member puts in themselves. When Sly was a kid, a group called the Fiendish Five killed his parents and ransacked his house for the book, ripping vital sections for themselves. Sly and his two friends, Bently and Murray, must venture around the world collecting the missing pages of the Thievius Raccoonus and bring the ones responsible for his parent’s death to justice.
The second generation of 3D platformers sure wore their influences on their sleeves. As Jak and Daxter were influenced by Banjo Kazooie, Sly Cooper takes obvious elements from franchises like Metal Gear Solid and Crash Bandicoot. Sly Cooper is a franchise that mixes elements of stealth in the rooted base of a 3D platformer. In Sly Cooper, everything in the environment can be readily used to traverse or as a means of stealth. Sly’s nimbleness allows him to climb up pipes, perch himself onto spires, latch onto hook-like objects with his cane, etc. When he needs to be stealthy, he can sidle against walls, quickly cover himself behind barriers, and even make himself invisible. You can probably imagine Sly controls extremely well, considering all of these different moves he can pull off. If he didn’t control it smoothly, the game would be unplayable. Fortunately, Sly’s versatile move set is backed by buttery smooth controls with an excellent framerate to boost. This is certainly a must for any platformer, but how does it lend to the stealth aspects? Sly will often find himself encountering guards with flashlights that are meant to be snuck around because they have ranged attacks that will home in if he gets caught. There are also yellow security beams scattered everywhere, and if Sly comes into contact with one of them, he’ll trigger an alarm. The beams turn red, and Sly will be incinerated if he contacts them again. Smooth controls for being stealthy are entirely necessary because of these obstacles. Combining stealth elements in a 3D platformer was probably uncommon then, so I’m glad the developers managed to execute both firmly with the controls.
One of the more outstanding aspects of Sly Cooper is its presentation. Sly Cooper is ultimately a franchise with a younger demographic in mind, but that doesn’t mean it has to be sickeningly cute. Sly is stylized as a cartoon with its cel-shaded animation and comic book-like presentation. The tone is rooted in film noir, a choice in the presentation to accentuate Sly’s role as a thief. The introductions of each chapter in this game highlight these presentation aspects wonderfully. Sly narrates the background of each Fiendish Five member like the narration in a noir film, presented with animated comic stills. The intro concludes with a title card with the chapter's name, similar to a noir film, and it could also be like introducing an episode of a cartoon. As far as the Metal Gear Solid influence, the influence isn’t entirely obvious, but it was the pinnacle of the stealth genre at the time. That, and the codex calls between Sly and Bently, talking heads jabbering about secret operations, are very reminiscent of the calls between Otacon and Snake.
The direction in Sly Cooper is more obviously inspired by Crash Bandicoot. Every level is a linear path to get an item, in this case, a key. There are approximately seven levels per hub world, but the hubs are far more intricately designed than the hubs in Crash Bandicoot. Once you get each key per level, Sly can access the area with the boss. Sly also dies in one hit like Crash but can take more damage if he collects a horseshoe that he wears on his red backpack. Sly can also upgrade to a golden horseshoe that allows him to take two hits instead of just one. Horseshoes are readily available in the levels but can also be acquired by collecting 100 coins. This health system is copied and pasted from acquiring 100 wumpa fruit to get Aku Aku as a protector in Crash Bandicoot. Also, the linear platforming levels naturally lend themselves to Crash Bandicoot comparisons. However, I do not think Sly Cooper executes this type of direction as well as in the Crash series. Linear 3D platformers were never my forte, and I’ve always preferred open-world-Esque 3D platformers. The areas of the latter type of games feel much more fleshed out and give substantial weight to the world. I didn’t mind it in the Crash series because everything about that series was simple; thus, the simple, linear level design was warranted. Sly presents us with so much interesting background about the character and his Robin Hood-like persona that it’s a shame the design of the game doesn’t match the same level of intricacy that the presentation does.
The linear level design of Sly Cooper also doesn’t work because the game is too easy. There are some levels in the Crash series that require several accurate maneuvers in jumping, defeating enemies, and getting past obstacles that will take a little while to get past and potentially have you farm lives for insurance. In Sly Cooper’s case, the environment and enemies are designed to be accessible for Sly, plus the more refined controls also help quite a bit. Sly might need one horseshoe to get through a level, but having the golden horseshoe almost guarantees that Sly will easily get through it. Areas that are more focused on stealth can sometimes be tense because Sly can only get hit once, but the game is still lenient with error. The strength of the levels is intertwined with the acrobatics Sly can pull off rather than presenting a substantial challenge. It’s still fun, but I felt much more entranced by the difficulty of Crash Bandicoot than I was by testing out the capabilities of Sly’s moveset.
The levels are still enjoyable because of the variety each hub world presents. Besides effectively catering to Sly’s range of movement, each main level takes place in a different area of the world. I can probably attribute my interest in geography as a kid to playing Sly Cooper because each area is different and geographically dispersed. Besides the obvious location of Paris at the tutorial level, each area is somewhat based on real-world locations. The Welsh coastline is a rainy, craggy graveyard of pirate ships. Mesa City is a discount Las Vegas centered in a dry canyon region of Utah. Haiti (no specific region) capitalizes on the country’s voodoo lore for a spooky level filled with ghosts and witch doctors. China is snowy and mountainous, and everything about this area, from the enemies to the architecture, screams orientalism. Using the unique geography of each of these places is how the developers get away with using the platformer trope of providing different themed areas to keep the game fresh.
Mesa City is a desert area, China is a snow level, and Haiti is a quasi-Halloweeny area. All of these are staples in the platformer genre, but the real-world elements give these areas a substantial identity not only between the levels in the game but in the Sly Cooper franchise. Mesa City has Sly jumping on roulette tables and climbing neon fixtures on rooftops. Haiti has Sly sliding across vines from mammoth-sized swamp monsters, all the while batting at ghosts made of purple ectoplasm. Crash Bandicoot may have offered more of a challenge, but Sly accomplishes something in its level variety. These levels are also encouraged to be searched thoroughly and played more than once because of the bottle clues, the game’s only collectible. Across most levels, around 20-40 bottles will be scattered about that amount to unlocking a code to a vault with a page of the Thievius Raccoonus in it. Many of these pages unlock special moves varying in usefulness, but this collectible gives the player an incentive to explore these levels, and they make sense in the grand scheme of the story as well.
The developers of this game should’ve better centered their focus on achieving variety through different level foregrounds instead of going overboard with it via gimmicky levels. Besides platforming levels, the developers implemented other types of levels in the vein of vehicle levels and mini-games. Some levels have Sly piloting a floating orange cruiser equipped with blaster turrets. The biggest problem with these levels is that there are so many obstacles in Sly’s way, so most of the levels will be tediously blasting away at the hard-wearing obstacles. The mini-game levels involve preventing crabs from stealing treasure, whacking chickens (this level is also a total upset of tone from the Haiti level), and lighting torches with the body grease of piranhas. These mini-games are quick and easy but ultimately pointless. Sometimes, Carmelita will show up and try to subdue you with her shock pistol again. These levels are designed exactly like any normal platforming level, only with pistol blasts in the background. Fortunately for Sly, Carmelita has the aim of a drunk Stormtrooper, so she never poses much of a threat. The absolute worst gimmick levels are the ones with Murray. He’s not utilized as much in this game besides being Sly’s friend and the driver, so I guess the developers implemented him in these levels so you wouldn’t forget about him. Considering what they did, I’d rather be ambivalent towards Murray than be frustrated with him. One gimmick level has Sly protecting Murray as he escorts him through a road with guards coming around corners to whack him. Murray is utterly defenseless, so Sly has a turret gun at the helm to protect him. The difficulty comes from how feeble Murray is matched with shooting Murray on accident. The even worse gimmick levels are the two races. The team van controls like dogshit, and winning is a matter of being fortunate that the CPUs don’t steal the boosts. Platforming as Sly is a strong aspect of this game, and it never gets tiring, so why did the developers overdo it with these gimmicky levels? They should’ve been confident enough with the platforming levels, but the gimmick levels here make it apparent that the developers weren’t confident enough that the platforming levels were enough. The platforming levels are by far the strength of Sly Cooper, and these gimmick levels never prove themselves as welcome additions to the game.
The simplicity of this game also doesn’t bode well with its characters. Sly is naturally the main protagonist being the titular character and all, but all of the other main players are so underutilized that it begs the question as to why they are even there. Bently is the brains of Sly’s gang and the technological master. He’s a man of extraordinary intellect, but we never really get to relish in Bently’s genius. He’s essentially a glorified tutorial as he nasally gives Sly directions to new obstacles the game throws at you (I must get this point out of the way now that it’s mentioned. Throughout every game in the series, Bently will tell you how to execute a move by literally telling Sly the button combination the player has to do. What to do isn’t presented as a text blurb briefly on screen. It’s a voiced line by the characters to “press the circle button” and what not to do a certain move. I didn’t think much of this as a kid, but it irks me as an adult. I can’t tell if this is endearing because of how silly it is or if it pulls me out of the immersion. Is this a fourth-wall-breaking element taken from the Metal Gear Solid series or something? All of these moves are told through codex calls, after all). Sometimes Bently’s cautious nature clashes with Sly’s daring attitude, which is entertaining, but it happens so often that Bently starts to get annoying. I’ve already explained in detail why Murray feels underutilized. Sly even refers to him as a part-time burden in the beginning cutscene, and I’m not sure why the developers decided to make him the player’s part-time burden as well. Carmelita has steamy romantic chemistry with Sly but doesn’t pose much of a threat. Her voice actor also did a terrible job giving her character the passion she’s supposed to have. The voice acting also is a problem for Sly for the same reason. Sly is supposed to be cool and confident, but his voice actor puts it on a little too thick, and he sounds emotionless. He approaches each Fiendish Five member so nonchalantly that it’s almost like they didn’t kill his parents or anything.
The members of the Fiendish Five are a colorful crew of baddies that are also each level’s final boss. Each offers unique fights and serves a unique purpose in the gang. Raleigh is a bourgeois frog turned pirate who is the tech worker of the Fiendish Five. Muggshot is the dim-witted, gangster-inspired muscle of the gang. Mz. Ruby is a mystical supernatural worker, and the Panda King is the disenfranchised demolitions expert. They are all also a bit underwhelming in certain aspects. They are presented like the bosses in Crash Bandicoot, animal bosses with their own gimmicks one has to exploit to defeat them. The bosses in Crash Bandicoot are fine because the game is so simple. Still, Sly Cooper introduces us to these bosses with so much exposition with their own levels surrounding their personas that their encounters feel so anticlimactic. All of these fights are also incredibly easy, with Mz. Ruby’s fight is an unexceptional exception due to the broken rhythm-game gimmick.
Then there’s the fifth member of the Fiendish Five: Clockwerk, a giant menacing, mechanical owl fueled by his hatred for the Cooper Gang. Unlike the other members of the Fiendish Five, ripping up the Thievius Raccoonus was directly motivated by relinquishing the Cooper legacy, or so he thought. The final act up to Clockwerk is all climax as Sly, and the gang utilizes their talents to their fullest. Murray drives up to the volcano's peak in the van with Sly, clearing explosive ordinances and debris off the path. He then clears away monstrous, volcanic blobs to get Sly inside of the heart of Clockwerk’s lair. Bently then has to save Sly after he falls into one of Clockwerk’s traps by hacking the mainframe. It’s nice that Bently finally gets to shine, but it feels uneven implementing something new in the game's climax. The player then plays as Carmelita of all characters and helps Sly climb further up the volcano to face Clockwerk. Clockwerk is not an anti-climactic fight like the others. He makes his gigantic presence known with more exposition, detailing his hatred for Sly and his family. His fight is in three acts without checkpoints, so you know this final fight means business. The first two acts involve shooting at him with Carmelita’s weaponized jetpack, in which Carmelita exposes weaknesses in Clockwerk’s armor with shock pistol blasts. The real struggle here is maneuvering the jetpack with inverted PS2 controls. As Clockwerk plunges into the lava, Sly has to get past tons of laser security to make it to Clockwerk’s head to deal the final blows. Once the fight is done, the remnants of Clockwerk simmer in the lava, and Carmelita foolishly gives Sly a five-second head start before she tries to arrest him. He uses that opportunity to cuff her to the molten rock and make a getaway with his friends. That’s a real dick move, Sly. The malevolent menace Clockwerk is dead, and all's right with the world...or is it? (there is a cutscene after the credits with Clockwerk’s eyeball flashing, indicating that he’s not dead. You’d have to see this for the full impact of what I’m alluding to).
The Sly Cooper trilogy on the PS2 was one of my favorite series growing up and was an exemplary new 3D platformer IP worthy of being grouped with Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter. As for the first game of the series, the aspects that underwhelmed me as a kid still persist into adulthood. The first entry of this series feels like an incredible premise undermined by its simplistic, Crash Bandicoot-inspired direction. Don’t get me wrong, I like Crash Bandicoot just fine. The simple elements of that series serve it quite well. However, I feel like the Sly Cooper series had more depth and intrigue with its characters and its story. What is presented here is a 3D platformer that plays well with some great, varied levels mixed in with some dumb gimmicks. It feels more rooted in the more rudimentary 3D platformers of the previous generation than progressing with the other second-generation platformers. The full potential of the series wouldn’t come into full form just yet, so the first game always feels like it’s a league below the sequels.
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